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The Oscars: Austrian Director Defends Foreign Nominees

As this year's Oscar indignities go, few yielded the kind of outrage inspired by the Foreign-Language Film category's snubbing of the acclaimed Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and animated French coming-of-age tale Persepolis. Critics bridled, and even the chairman of the category's nominating committee told The Washington Post last month, "It's just inconceivable to me that they weren't included."

The blowback nudged those that were nominated, including the fine Austrian entry (and current favorite) The Counterfeiters, into the unfortunate, even unfair, position of having to justify their existence. "For me it's kind of funny," said Counterfeiters director Stefan Ruzowitzky, whose pre-Oscar publicity whirlwind took him Thursday to a Peggy Siegal–organized dinner in the film's honor. "I saw all these other movies like Persepolis, The Band's Visit, and 4 Months just to know how the competitors were. And the movies that are in now, I haven't seen any of them."Indeed, Ruzowitzky's fellow nominees—Beaufort (from Israel), Katyn (Poland), Mongol (Kazakhstan), and 12 (Russia)—have enjoyed a fraction of his own film's visibility or success on the international film festival circuit. This compelled some critics to complain about an out-of-touch Academy and even presume a long-standing agenda favoring "formulaic" Jewish themes, kids, and left-wing politics. (The Counterfeiters is about the true story of Operation Bernhard, the Nazi mission using concentration camp prisoners to develop counterfeit money that would destabilize the Allies' economies.)

Ruzowitzky shrugged off the insult, suggesting instead that the oversight has more to do with taste. "4 Months is what critics love, and in spite of all the praise and all the festival wins, nobody goes to see it or buy a ticket for it," he told me. "I wasn't too surprised, because the Oscars is about craftsmanship as well. This 15-minute sequence where the main character is sitting at the table? As a craftsman and a writer, you're always trained to [relate] something in as little time and as precisely as possible, you know? And I thought after one minute, I got the concept. After five minutes, I definitely got it. For Academy members who are craftsmen as well, it's something they don't appreciate that much. As we all have learned, it's hard to make the right predictions."

S.T. VanAirsdale is the founder and editor of the New York film culture site The Reeler.